Mayor of Rome announces opposition to city’s 2024 Olympic bid

Rome’s mayor has announced her opposition to Italy’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2024, in a move that is likely to mean the end of the capital’s ambitious campaign.

罗马市长表态反对意大利申办2024年奥运会，这可能为罗马期待已久的申奥之旅画上句号。

Virginia Raggi was elected in June and has faced a tumultuous start to her tenure.

维吉尼亚•拉吉在六月当选罗马市长，任期伊始便面临混乱场面。

“We are effectively asking the people of Rome and of Italy to shoulder the debts. We just don’t support it,” Raggi said on Wednesday.

“这实际上在向罗马甚至全国人民摊派债务。我不能支持这种做法，”拉吉在周三表示。

The announcement will add to concerns that the Olympic Games are increasingly being viewed with scepticism by potential host cities who worry about costs, environmental concerns, and the objections of local citizens.

因担心产生巨大开销和环境问题，害怕当地民众反对，候选城市正日益对奥运会投向质疑的目光。这番表态无疑将加重这种印象。

While the Roma 2024 campaign has not formally abandoned its bid, organisers had already suggested that the mayor’s support would be necessary to continue. The move leaves Paris, Los Angeles and Budapest in contention. Boston and Hamburg, two other early potential candidates, have already pulled out.

The decision was not surprising because Raggi had already signalled during her election campaign that she did not support the Olympic bid. Her party, the Five Star Movement, is vehemently opposed to unwieldy infrastructure projects and initiatives that are seen as vanity projects that come at a high cost to taxpayers.

The decision came at a time when Raggi has come under pressure to right the course of her administration following a series of personnel issues, and when Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi, who enthusiastically launched the bid in December 2014, is facing a difficult referendum this autumn that could – at least temporarily – end his career in politics.

Renzi had launched the Olympic bid even though Rome at the time found itself at the centre of a series of public corruption scandals that came to be known as Mafia Capitale, raising questions about whether it could pull off a “clean” Olympics.

伦齐宣布申奥时，罗马正陷于一场公开的贪腐丑闻“黑手党案”（Mafia Capitale），这使得人们质疑罗马是否能举办一场“干净”的奥运。

“We can’t allow our problems to stop us from dreaming,” he said in 2014.

“我们不能让问题阻止我们追梦的脚步，”他在2014年这样说道。

For proponents of the bid, the idea of hosting the Olympic Games, while daunting, was seen as a way for the city to unite around a lofty goal, and a way to give the city the motivation necessary to pull off a huge global event that could return the city to the glory days of La Dolce Vita.

If Renzi’s view was too optimistic, then Raggi’s may have sounded a bit too downtrodden. The 38-year-old lawyer said the city was still paying debts it had accrued for the Games in 1960, and would not stand for more “cathedrals in the desert” – abandoned stadiums – that the city could ill afford.

“The Olympics are a dream that turn into a nightmare. I don’t have all the facts about Rio, but we have the image in our eyes of the citizens of Rio,” she said.

“奥林匹克这场美梦已成为一个梦魇。我不了解里约经历了什么，但在我们身上看得到里约市民的影子，”她说。

The day included a touch of drama after Italy’s Olympic Committee president, Giovanni Malago, who was supposed to meet with Raggi before the press conference, left city hall in a huff after complaining that he had waited for her for half an hour but that she had not showed up.